


Ferric

by argyleam



Category: Age of Ultron - Fandom, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, Revenge, the military-industrial complex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-05-06
Packaged: 2018-03-29 07:30:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3887590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/argyleam/pseuds/argyleam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I wanted to see a confrontation between Wanda and Tony, but there wasn't one in the movie, so I wrote one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ferric

**Author's Note:**

> Specific type-of-violence warnings in the endnotes. Please do heed them if you need them.

Tony Stark didn’t sleep heavily, these days. He probably never had. Maybe when he was a child, maybe for a little while, but usually now he started awake at every sound, and so when his eyes opened and there was someone in his room he wasn’t all that surprised. There was a little sound in the shadows, and first he thought _shit, Pepper_ , and almost rolled for the gauntlet in the nightstand. But Pepper was in Taiwan right now. 

So instead he said, “Hi, Wanda.”

“You make noises when you sleep.” she said. She was standing in the shadows in the corner of the room. He could barely see the shine of her eyes. The lights of the city through the windows glimmered off the red stone of her necklace.

“I have some pretty weird dreams,” he said, watching her. He was used to this kind of jolting fear, at this point, he was used to waking up to it. He still didn't _like_ it.

She gestured at his chest. He slept shirtless, most nights, and the scar from the reactor was like a crater, bigger than his fist. “You did this?” she asked. “Or it was done to you.”

“Oh. Yes.” Tony said, tapping on the scar where the plate used to be. “Done to me, to keep me alive. In a cave, in a desert.” He let his hand fall. “And then the man who raised me tore the reactor out of my chest and tried to kill me, so.” He reached for his water. “Not a lot of good memories.” He took a gulp. His stomach was a little clench-y, given that he was pretty sure he knew what she was here for. “And you -” he waved his arms in a sort of drunk-hippie way that he hoped indicated terrible magics - “was that done to you? Or did you do it?” 

Wanda lifted her chin, challenging. “I permitted it to be done,” she said. “So that I could kill you.” 

“Yeah, I noticed that part.” he said, dryly. He was still laying there, in his bed, in sweatpants that said PROPERTY OF STARK INDUSTRIES down the leg, and if he was going to die he was going to die with horrifying morning breath. “For the record, thank you for not doing it right then.”

A corner of her mouth lifted. “We were busy.” She stepped forward, out of the overhanging shadows. “We’re less busy now.” 

He gave up and sat up, patted the comforter. She looked at his hand, looked at him, looked confused. He shrugged, pulled his blanket up around his shoulders. 

“You’re not going to try to stop me?” she said, finally. She sounded a little bewildered, and he wondered again how old she was. Not that old, probably. He could find the file, later, assuming he was right and there was a later. 

“I think you have something you need to say to me,” he said. “And here I am,” he gestured, “naked and alone, which is a good time to tell someone something.”

“You have pants,” she said, chidingly, and then stopped herself. Her hands were up in what must be a defensive stance, if you knew magic, which Tony didn’t. Her eyes were so dark in the light from the servers. She was wearing a shawl, what kind of superhero wore a _shawl_? What kind of supervillain murdered Tony in his bed while wearing a shawl? 

“Shirtless and alone, then,” Tony supplied. 

“Did it hurt?” she said suddenly. She was still looking at the reactor scar. 

“Yes,” he said, resisting the urge to press his palm against it. “It almost killed me more than once. Technically I died, I think.”

She snorted. “Even you, your weapons killed.”

“ _Yes_ ”, he said, “Yes, that’s kind of the thematic point to the last decade of my life -” He shook his head, stopping himself. “Say what you need to say, Wanda.”

Her hands were cupped in front of her, now, like she held something invisible. There was a faint, dark wind behind her, like the shadows in that corner of the room were expanding, and Tony was faintly aware that he really, really didn’t want her to throw whatever invisible thing she held. “You killed my family,” she said, her voice low and dark and trembling. “You _murdered_ them in their home.”

There were a million responses that he could have made. No, he hadn’t. He hadn’t even known about their country, frankly. The weapons that he had sold - as far as FRIDAY could trace - had traveled through four or five middlemen before they’d landed in the Maximoffs’ living room. It hadn’t been _his_ fault, technically, it had been the world’s fault, he didn’t even get _involved_ in these piddling little land wars back then - 

There was one truthful thing he could say, though, and maybe he’d been spending too much time around Steve, so he said it - “Yes,” he said. “Not directly, no, but yes. You’re right. I did. I am so, so sorry.” 

Sincerity still felt weird coming out of his mouth. It felt falser than saying something glib would have. Anyway, he was sure FRIDAY was recording his last words, if these were them. Maybe she’d rewrite them into something clever. 

Her hands were strange, now, like lightning gathered in them, all very Star Wars, but he looked past them at her face. She was so _young_ , he should have memorized the dates in her files, how old had she been when the experimentation started? She’d been a child when she’d first begun to hate him. “Why don’t you stop me from killing you, then?” she said, almost spitting the words out. 

He spread his hands. “Sometimes I can’t stop things.” he said, and _there_ it was, those would be properly ironic last words. Good, he was glad that he got there in the end. 

The thing was that he could, though. There were code words that would bring the whole place down around Wanda. There was a panic button on the nightstand, hidden in the join of the table. Hell, there was a _sign_ he could make that would bring the suit’s gloves rocketing to him. And yet he didn’t. Cap would say that it was hope, probably, some gooshy noble reason. Tony wasn’t so sure about that. 

“You should,” she said. “I can burn your mind until you’re just a screaming cinder, Stark. I can put you in a literal hell that would last for the rest of your miserable life. You have no idea of the tortures I can inflict.”

“Oh, I know.” he said. “You’re fucking _terrifying_ , Wanda.”

“So stop me,” she said, mocking. “Get up and kill the last Maximoff.”

“ _No_ ,” he said. “No, nyet, nein, no thank you.”

She twisted her hand and something _terrible_ happened. Tony had, among other things, sustained some pretty terrible electrical shocks in his time, and this felt like that, like fire and lightning down his spine, and like a sort of horrible blackness behind his eyes. Like bleeding out. He’d bled out before. “Try to stop me,” she said, again, commandingly, and his hands almost lifted, against his will, in the gesture that called the suit. 

His fingers clenched shut into fists. “No.” he said. 

She curled her fingers and he tumbled forward on the bed. It was like a seizure without all the fun unconsciousness, everything was solid pain and behind his eyes he saw the face of the kid in the Humvee. He saw all of their faces. At least the kid in the Humvee had been shot clean. He knew - he _already knew_ , it wasn’t a new slideshow for his mind - the thing about incendiary bombs is that you had a minute first. You had a minute for dying to happen. There weren’t a lot of ways to die nice, in a war, and behind his eyes it was replaying on repeat, like Wanda was rifling through and tearing open every goddamn horror that got unleashed upon the world. There were a lot of them. Tony wasn’t _stupid_. He’d been ignorant, back then, but not of this. He’d decided not to know, mostly. He’d made a series of choices. 

“ _Yes_ ,” he gritted out, between clenching teeth. “ _I know_.”

“So _stop_ me,” she said, her voice rising into a shriek, and he was suddenly intensely aware that he was dry-heaving as his body seized on the bed, but that was a goddamn picnic compared to what Wanda was shoving into his brain, because Wanda had seen things that even Tony had been protected from, in the war, and the bodies were blackened and the smell would be with him for the rest of his life, and he spit out bile and said, “ _No_.” 

She was so close to him he could have touched her, she clawed her hands in like daggers and found him dying of cardiac arrest on the couch, Obi’s footsteps echoing in his ears, and maybe it was purpose or maybe it was an accident but he found her, he found her laying under the couch in the dust, dying of thirst, Pietro dying of thirst behind her. Little children, really, staring at the hole where their parents had been. 

Her face was clenched and terrible, from what he could see through the haze. It was hard to make words - she was wreaking havoc on the muscles in his jaw - but she would understand him, right? She was in his head. There was blood dribbling out of his mouth. He must have bit his tongue in the last convulsion. “One of you lives.” he said, through the disgusting mess she’d made of him, and she sank down on her knees and blackness edged his vision and then she dropped her hands. 

She was crying. The part of Tony that was not so involved in the disaster that his whole face was right now thought, oh, good, the one of us who _isn’t_ bleeding into a pool of vomit cries, that seems right. The rest of him found that it could move his arms, a little, and he sort of. Waved an arm towards her, and she flinched back, automatically, like he could _do_ something to her at this point. Like the puke-covered middle-aged man was going to hurt her. 

If he’d had full control of his mouth, it would be a glib train of words, lighter and more ridiculous, but there wasn’t anything not-ridiculous he could say right now, anyway, so he spat out a wad of blood again and said “Sorry.”

Her accent was thick through her tears. “Go _fuck yourself_.” she said, “You terrible murderous asshole.” 

He managed to flail a little closer. He was disgusting, but then, that was what happened when you tried to give someone a death seizure, so he went ahead and patted her shoulder. She flinched again, and then her shoulders dropped, and she was sobbing, her forehead on the bed. “I am so, so sorry.” he said. “Everything.” More goddamn blood, where was it coming from? He’d probably torn something in his mouth, then. “Is because I’m sorry.”

“I should kill you,” she said. Her voice was almost as thick as his.

“Maybe.” he said. “A lot of people would agree.” Saying that much was _painful_. He flopped back. “Ow.” he said.

“ _Good_ ,” she said, vengefully. She looked up. Her eyes were almost red with shot blood vessels. “I hope it _really hurts_.” 

“ _Yep_.” he said, and spat out more blood. She was watching him, so he made a decision and gestured towards the nightstand. “First aid kit.” It was right there, on the open shelf, because Tony’s life was nothing if not predictable on the first-aid front.

She threw it at him, and he scrabbled for the little home bandaging kit Dr. Cho had put together. When he pulled the tab and slapped it on his jaw it glowed, and he could feel his bleeding mouth start to heal.

He wished he could put it on his brain. There were things in there that would work like that - amnesics, anxiolytics. He didn’t reach for them. He closed his eyes, tried to breathe, tried to breathe again. It got easier, a little at a time. He wondered if she could have given him a heart attack, on top of everything else. That wasn’t a good feeling, that pain in his chest. It eased. It kept easing. 

He opened his eyes. Her shoulders were still shaking. He reached out, a little less clumsily, and patted her hand. She didn’t flinch, this time.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re sorry.” she said, finally. 

“Maybe not.” he said. 

“I could still kill you with a word.” she said, with a kind of bitterness. 

“I absolutely believe you.” he replied. “A lot of people can kill a lot of people.” 

She glared at him.

“I’m glad you didn’t,” he said. She was mostly gone from his brain, but he could tell, in that second, that she really wanted to punch him.

After a long, long moment, she stood, and reached out her hand and helped him up.

**Author's Note:**

> More specific warnings: emetophobia would not mesh well with this, blood, torture, incendiary bombs


End file.
